It is amazing how far the outer boundaries psychedelic music have spread over the past forty three years. At this point, unless you're listening to something pretty lame, psychedelic music has burrowed itself in just about every corner of rock'n'roll music, from the raggedness of Roky Erickson back in the mid-60s to the meandering fuzz drone of the more contemporary acts like Wooden Shjips. When an act comes along such as Gary War that seems to conjure the ever-changing zeitgeist of psychedelia out of the ether, it's remarkable. His songs not only pay homage to the bands that have brought us to these crossroads over the past half of a decade, but they also seem to walk us through a sound scape of styles, and in the process, Gary War carved out his spot in the ageless catalog of psychedelic music.
Gary War, the mysterious upstart from Brooklyn, NY has just released his debut LP this winter on SHDWPLY/DISARO Records. Playing with vast, sweeping echoes, softly sung lyrics, and infusing sonic textures through synth-driven overtures, Gary War's album, New Raytheonport takes us through the often banal sonics of the psychedelic form with a fresh take on what seems at first, an aggregate of the past couple of decades of drug-influenced music, and drops us dead center, at the doorstep to La La Land. His tonal insobriety, from one song to the next is a true sign of the times, where artists are driven to explore different avenues, melding genres, vocal styles and instrumentation to arrive somewhere new, all the while taking the listener along for the ride. Pulling from influences that hold as much up to Chrome as they do Syd Barret, Gary War is able to wrangle them from every corner, and he even covers The Alan Parsons Project without sounding misguided,or a late arriving hippie on a hotbox high. Instead, Gary War creates a sound that wisps through the knobby branches of the past and sumptuously uproots our notions of the boundaries of psychedelia.
Check out his collaboration with Blank Dogs, called Roman Soldiers, right here, too.
